There is a connection between understanding language and understanding music. It is not hard to convince people on an intuitive level that there is such a connection, but what this connection is exactly is hard to see. This is because the two things often are very different. The criteria for understanding a musical phrase, for instance, are different from the criteria for understanding a sentence in language. But not only that, the criteria are of different kinds: they involve “understanding” in different senses. Demonstrating an understanding a musical phrase is not typically a matter of translating it, for example—at least not in the way it is with sentences in language. Understanding a musical phrase is, as so many have said before, something that comes out, for example, in how one plays it. And yet there is a connection. And the connection shows, for instance, in the fact that we can talk of “translation” as a way to demonstrate understanding, even in the case of musical phrases: One might, for instance, demonstrate their understanding of a musical phrase by “translating” it from a minor to a major key. So there is room, in discussing musical understanding for using terms that are borrowed from the understanding of language. And this is one way in which the connection between understanding music and understanding language shows itself: Musical understanding sometimes “dresses up” like understanding of language. And—and this will be what I’ll focus on below—something similar can happen in the opposite direction: the understanding of language, in some cases, can take on the grammar of understanding music. One more thing before I begin: One motivation I have here is to separate the kind of uses of language Wittgenstein called ‘secondary uses’ from other uses; that is, I want to make the difference deep enough. In doing this, I am resisting the idea that secondary uses are just another kind of application in a line of applications that we can make of linguistic expressions. But I’m not going to say much about secondary senses, since my aim is to put alongside one another and thus characterize different uses of language, and not to debate what Wittgenstein had in mind when he talked about secondary senses. (1) Let me begin with understanding language and work toward the understanding of music. There is not one notion of understanding a sentence. And one way to begin to see the connection between understanding language and understanding music is by starting from a particular, rather special, notion of understanding language. This is not yet the case in which it takes on the grammar of understanding music, but I hope to show below that it is closely related. One notion of understanding a sentence, then, is that in which when I give you the sentence out of any relevant context, you say: “Yes, I know what to do with it; I know how it can be useful.” It is like understanding a word or an expression out of context: understanding what the word or expression can be used for, when you hear it out of context. If I say, for instance, “a painful stare” you might say “I know what this expression can describe” and then go on to apply it in a particular case. Here, understanding what the expression means is tied to being largely in agreement when and how to apply it. Notice that the expression when I thus give it to you, or the word or sentence , is not in use, in a certain sense of ‘use.’ That is, when we thus utter a sentence, word, or expression, we are as it were referring to a kind of use that we are not yet making of it. Remembering this distinction is crucial to everything I’ll say here. To mention and contemplate a word or expression out of context in the way I described is not yet to apply it in a particular case. And in this sense, we can talk of use out of context, apart from application. As I can ask out of context: “Do you know what ‘bank’ means?” and you would be inclined to say you do. What is important here is that we separate the two kinds of uses of a term—the use that the word has out of context, and the use that it has in context, e.g. when we tell someone we will meet them by the bank. I need a term for the first kind of use, so let me call it ‘non-application use.’ This is a technical term, but the need for it is not technical—the distinction between application uses and non-application uses speaks, I believe, to a natural distinction. Let me emphasize one thing about non-application uses. Non-application uses have a connection to application uses. In the case of the examples I gave above, despite not involving actual application, the notion of understanding relevant to non-application uses is such that to understand the meaning of an expression out of context is to be able to apply the expression correctly: to use it in context. That is, the notion of understanding here is strongly tied to correct application of the expression word or sentence.(2) So we have a notion of the meaning of a word or a sentence or an expression, which involves understanding it outside of a context for its application. And closely related to that, but at the same time concerning a different sort of cases, is another notion of understanding language, which involves playing with meanings in a way that is similar to the way we play with sounds—as if meanings were notes in the imagination, and the words were the keyboard upon which one could play. One could accordingly ask: what does the notion of Wednesday make you feel? And being able to describe that feeling demonstrates knowledge of the meaning of the word. ‘Meaning’ here connotes a kind of experience, and understanding the meaning involves having this experience. It is as if meanings were flavors, and we could combine them in a sentence as we combine tastes in a salad to create a certain experience. Sounds combine in a similar way too into a musical theme (although this is not all there is to music!). And we may thus use the feel that words give like we use notes or chords. This is the sort of case I mentioned at the beginning, in which the understanding of language takes on the grammar of understanding music. And I take it that this is the kind of thing that Wittgenstein called “secondary meaning.” Note how deeply different meaning is from secondary meaning: The kind of unity that a proposition has—often captured in the fact that a proposition represents a unified action, speech-act—is completely different from the kind of unity that the culinary experience of a salad has. The latter is more akin then the former to the kind of unity that words in a sentence like Wittgenstein’s “Wednesday is fat” has. And since good philosophical work could be written consisting entirely of jokes,see also Monty Python’s Woody and Tinny Words. I owe the link to Miles Rind. This second kind of understanding of a linguistic expression I just described is arguably very different from understanding the expression in a context of application, where the experience and psychological associations that surround the expression are typically irrelevant. For if I say that I will meet you on Wednesday, there is a level on which your understanding of this does not depend on the feelings and associations that the word gives you—if it moves you, intimidates you, bores you, or upsets you for instance. You understand the words if you know when to wait for me. But this second kind of use I described, call it the ‘meaning-experience use’ of an expression, is one of the ways in which we use words, and in this sense it is one of the things that words can be said to “mean.” Presumably, words can have such meanings because, or to the extent that, words give us similar associations, and can have similar psychological effects on us. In any case, using words like this is using them to create a certain type of psychological effect. It is somewhat like using “boo!” to intimidate.

Now, I just said that when using language in the second kind of way I described we mean to create a psychological effect, and that it is thus similar to shouting "boo!" to intimidate. However, and this is very important, it is unlike it too, and therefore unlike the use of notes in music. Here, concepts are invoked, and the kind of psychological experience that such uses elicit is connected to those concepts and the meaning of the relevant words—to the meaning that they have in actual contexts of application. Knowledge of language—ability to apply the words in particular contexts—is essential to this effect, and not as an external condition. Rather, the effect created by words when so used can only be described in terms of the knowledge of the relevant applications of language. The psychological keyboard one is playing on here is a keyboard of words and meanings. Thus, for example, if someone uses a kind of metaphor to describe another’s facial expression, saying that their face is “open,” one may thereby be utilizing the fact that the range of applications that the word ‘open’ has in actual contexts of application brings with it a certain type of experience in those who have mastered this range of applications. One then describes the facial expression with this experience--let the experience rub off on the expression and thereby characterize it. (3)In (1) and (2) above I mentioned two notions of understanding of a linguistic expression. The similarity between the two is that in both cases there is involved a kind of mentioning of a word, contemplating it, out of context. And in both cases, the kinds of understandings involved connote another, third, kind of understanding of the expression—a third kind of meaning that the expression has: a meaning it has in ordinary contexts of application. So, regarding the first kind of understanding I mentioned, when asking, out of context, if one is familiar with the word ‘bank’ or knows what “a painful stare” would look like, the implication is that those expressions can be applied for particular purposes in actual contexts—explaining what a certain building is, or describing a certain facial expression. This, even though they are not already applied in this way in the question; for the question is not about the building or the facial expression, but about the words. Similarly, when in the second kind of cases I mentioned, we bring an isolated word up, say ‘Rhubarb’ and ask what the word makes one feel, or when we associate a word like ‘open,’ with a facial expression, the intention is to elicit the association that are connected with the word when used in contexts like "I decided to try to grow some rhubarb this year," or “You may come in, the door is open”—i.e. the word with its familiar meaning in actual contexts of applications. In both cases, then, the kind of meaning that the expression has depends, albeit in different ways, on its having that third, more ordinary, kind of meaning. And in this sense, this third kind of meaning can be said to be more basic. The difference between the two notions I mentioned in (1) and (2) is in how the understanding in each case is related to, dependent on, that third kind of meaning that the expression has in actual contexts of applications. In the first kind of cases I discussed, the meaning of the word, when examined outside of context, is something that anticipates application in actual contexts; it guides it, informs it. The point of asking about the meaning of a word, say ‘bank,’ in such cases is to prepare the way for an actual application of the word, for example. It is targeted at application; it is preparatory. In opposition to this, in the second kind of cases I discussed, the use is not targeted at application, and is not preparatory. When I say the word ‘open’ in such a way as to only elicit in you the feeling that the meaning of the word gives and get you to associate this with some facial expression, this connotes the meaning that the word has in actual contexts of application, but it is not meant to inform or guide it. The use of the word here “piggybacks” on the fact that the word has a certain use in actual contexts of application; but the point is not to guide the mind to such application. Meaning here is not connected to use.